“UNBUILT HELSINKI” Museum of Finnish Architecture, Helsinki

1. I didn’t draw the roads. I didn’t paint any trees. I didn’t lay down pathways. Places for people to sit. Stare. Lust. Cry. I didn’t design their dreams. I didn’t set the horizon. I didn’t put in dogs, their snarls, needy panting, those hurled sticks, measures of obedience. I didn’t think about dog shit, and where Good People put dog shit in a Good City. I didn’t, but I could have. I didn’t allocate parking spaces, under- or overground. I didn’t install strip lighting to keep us safe. I didn’t stipulate disabled ramps at the right incline.

I didn’t propose a walkway in the sky, jurassic concrete hair rising from tropical heat. I didn’t control the weather. I didn’t position the sun so the shadows would make everything seem more real. I didn’t arrange stars in new astrological constellations. I didn’t, but if I wanted to, maybe I could. I didn’t put in skyscrapers. I didn’t select if they would be Miesian or New Asian. Intelligent or unfinished. I didn’t place wind turbines on top of their green roofs. I didn’t factor in urban farming, the needs of the victims of the end of the Industrial Revolution. I didn’t, but I should have. I didn’t suggest—with the use of an enormous scale-model made by Chinese hands—this is where people should live, this is how they will be happy, this is a community. I didn’t deploy troops, concrete barriers, emergency hoarding, chairs that can be used as missiles, children that can be used as collateral. That is how history will be avenged. I didn’t; no one asked me to. I didn’t raise the expectations of the Mayor or the President or the People in all their multitude and meanness and human magnificence. I didn’t print out all the plans and sections and photo realistic perspectives there to produce hope and profit and the profit of hope because I did not press the PRINT button. I wouldn’t, I should have? I didn’t submit my vision to the pale scrutiny of reality, the arbitration of Time: how cruel it can be, how fearsome and awesome it once was. Wasn’t it? I didn’t build the city. I kept it. For myself. I’ll keep it, until you arrive.